Choderlos de Laclos

Pierre Choderlos de Laclos (18 October 1741-5 September 1803) was a general of the French Republic during the French Revolutionary Wars.

Biography
Pierre Choderlos de Laclos was born on 18 October 1741 in Amiens, Kingdom of France to a bourgeois family. In 1760 he was sent to an artillery school and was a lieutenant stationed at La Rochelle during the ending of the Seven Years' War. Despite being promoted to captain in 1771, he was bored with the company of the soldiers and the garrisoning of cities, so he became a writer. In 1788 he left the army after writing a few plays, but returned after the French Revolution and entered the service of Philippe Egalite in many plots and intrigues. Laclos obtained a position in the Ministry of War, helping to organize the French Revolutionary Army, and this led to the victory at the Battle of Valmy on 20 September 1792. After the dismissal of General Charles-Francois Dumouriez, he was imprisoned as an "Orleanist", but was released in July 1794 after the Thermidorian Reaction. In 1800, having met Napoleon Bonaparte, he was reinstated as a Brigadier-General of the Army of the Rhine and fought in the Battle of Biberach. In 1803 he was made the commander-in-chief of reserve artillery, but died of dysentery and malaria in Taranto, Kingdom of Naples. After the reinstation of the House of Bourbon, his tomb was destroyed and his bones thrown into the sea.